UK police probe plot to kill Borodin

09 April, 2013

* Tycoon’s death threat follows murder of oligarch Berezovsky *

London police probing the “unexplained” death of oligarch Boris Berezovsky are investigating an alleged plot to kill another Russian billionaire exiled in Britain, according to UK press reports.
A would-be hitman said he was offered $1 mln to kill former Bank of Moscow president Andrey Borodin, 45, who fled to the UK two years ago with his wife Tatiana.
The existence of the plot, which has been reported to MI5, is understood to have been a factor in the surprise decision of the Home Office to grant Borodin asylum in February claiming he was being persecuted by allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
His 140 mln pound home in Henley-on-Thames, Oxon, is 20 kms from Berezovsky’s Ascot mansion, where the 67-year-old was found dead last month.
Borodin was labelled “the new Berezovsky” after funding human rights groups opposed to Putin’s regime. And he branded Russia’s charges of fraud involving huge loans as “trumped up”.
Thames Valley Police said it “received a report about a perceived threat to a 45-year-old man” last December. Police sources added that a potential hitman had been approached by influential political figures in Chechnya and offered a large sum of money to kill Borodin. The ruling elite in Chechnya is known to have close ties to the Kremlin, reports added.